Localization

Together with Thunderbird 38, we will be releasing Lightning 4.0. Both of these releases are not beta versions, but similarly major releases like Lightning 3.3, Lightning 2.6 and their respective Thunderbird counterparts.

We have about 11 weeks left until the release will be final, and while the developers are doing their best to make sure features are stable and there are no regressions, its time to do some translation work.

If you have been missing your language in Lighting in the past, maybe this is a good time to contact the l10n team of your language and express interest to translate Lightning. While the initial hurdle may be large, there are usually not many changes in strings between Lightning releases. If you are lucky, someone had already translated part of Lightning in the past and all you have to do is update your locales. The translation process is fairly simple and can be done using your favorite browser.

If you are already part of the Localization teams, this is the time to head over to mozilla.locamotion.org and translate the remaining Lightning strings. Once you are done translating and the changes have been pushed to the localization repositories, please head over to the Thunderbird l10n dashboard (not the Calendar Dashboard) and sign-off the latest change. Make sure you are signing off the later changeset of Thunderbird and Lightning, as only the newest sign-off will be used.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email or comment on this post and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

As you may have noticed if you are using the beta versions, there have been a few localization problems in the past. This is not the localizers fault, but rather a problem with our build infrastructure.

I have been working on moving the Lightning builds from their own build machines to building together with Thunderbird. This doesn’t mean that Lightning will be pre-installed with Thunderbird, it just saves time while building since I don’t have to maintain a separate set of build machines.

Unfortunately, since Lightning is just piggybacking the Thunderbird build targets, this causes a dilemma for the localized builds. Before the localization process begins, the language files are downloaded from the mercurial server and updated to the specific version which was signed-off by a Thunderbird localizer. As Lightning can only hook into the build process itself, there is no previous step to update the language files to the version which was signed-off by the Lightning localizers. Adding this step is non-trivial.

In some cases it will magically work, if the Thunderbird localizer signed off a later version than the Lightning localizer, because the Lightning changes will then be contained too. Right now I don’t have a good solution other than to ask localizers to sign off on the Thunderbird dashboard. I’m trying to figure out some alternatives, in the worst case I will have to do the language repackaging manually for Thunderbird 24 / Lightning 2.6.

If you have some experience with Mozilla’s release engineering and have an idea how to solve this, I’m happy to hear it!

Its been quite a long time, but now I am happy to announce that localized nightly builds have returned. The main intent for these builds are to help localizers check if their language changes are correct, but of course anyone can use them.

You can get the builds for the comm-aurora branch or when the network outage is solved then also for the comm-central branch. There is one file per locale.

These builds are just in time for the major release of Lightning 2.6 which will be compatible with the Thunderbird 24 release. After the upcoming merge on June 24th, Lightning 2.6 will be on comm-aurora. If you are a localizer, please take the time to make sure your translations are accurate and ready for the release. If you are a user you can do the same, please report bugs in translation to the Mozilla Localizations product.

Since the last big release is a while back, I thought I’d let everyone know that the current Lightning 2.6 nightly builds on comm-central will become the release compatible with Thunderbird 24, the next big Thunderbird release.

What this means for localizers
When the current 6 weeks cycle ends, the code will merge down to comm-aurora as usual. At this moment you should be preparing your translations and signing off. There is no process change, you will still have time until the beta, but especially if you have a lot of untranslated strings you might want to start early. While the intermediate beta releases have not been so important, missing the deadline this time means up to 42 weeks of Lightning without your language.

What this means for developers
Have a patch you are working on? A nice new feature? Better get it in review soon, otherwise we might have to postpone it. Especially so if it contains string changes, additions or removals. Again, postponing means at least 42 weeks before its in the final release.

What this means for users
It is vitally important that you test the Lightning builds we offer. Given we haven’t had final releases in a while more regressions might have snuck in and its better we find them early. It would be super helpful if you could test the nightly builds, but if you want a little more safety, there is a test week in progress for Thunderbird and the current Lightning beta. You are of course encouraged to install the beta builds at any time. I personally use them for my production calendars.

Now that Lightning 1.0 has been released, we can move forward and adapt to the rapid release schedule that Thunderbird and Firefox are using. In terms of development we will do this gradually but for localization we will do so right away. From now on, if you are already used to the Firefox/Thunderbird localizations you can think the same for Calendar.

Here is an overview of where to get the sources and see the translation progress

Specifically for Lightning 1.1, we have managed to open a milestone for Lightning 1.1. I’d like to encourage you to sign off on this milestone until December 5th so we can be ready in time for the release on December 20th.

Hi everyone,
it’s really hard for me, but I’ve decided to resign from my different roles in The Calendar Project (mainly as webmaster and l10n contact) as of today (Monday).
Within the last six months it has become clear to me, that I’m not able to do the job adequately anymore, as my time has been more and more occupied with matters related to my private life and my day job. Therefore I’ve not been able to dedicate as much volunteer
time to this role as I would have liked or hoped.
I don’t want to fill a role any longer, where I’m not satisfied with my performance and where a motivated person with more time on his/her hands could really make the difference, that I can’t make anymore.
I’m currently working with Philipp, our lead developer, on a transition plan. Once a new person takes over, I’ll make sure to be available and help him/her with ramping up in the new role. If anybody is interested in picking up some or all of this work, we (meaning Philipp or me) would love to talk to you.
I’ve written up a list of things, that I’ve performed regularly in this role to give people an impression of what’s involved. The list is available here.
In my eyes, the Calendar Project is a project, where one person can really make a difference, unlike in large projects as Firefox, where the impact of one person is often just a drop in the sea. So please get in touch!
It’s been a real pleasure working with all of you
PS: I will also resign from my role as Thunderbird l10n contact. Please see this blog post for more information.

The Calendar Project is proud to report, that (finally) the 1.0 beta1 release of Lightning has been completed and is now available via AMO.

Nearly 16 months after the 0.9, this release is more than overdue and we’re more than happy to get the nearly 500 bugfixes and improvements into the hands of our users. Notable improvements of this release are:

Seamless integration into the new Thunderbird 3.0 user interface

The different modes (calendar view, task view) are now displayed in tabs

Lightning now supports SeaMonkey 2.0 as a host application

You can now define multiple alarms for a single event

CalDAV support and interoperability with various CalDAV servers have been improved

The application stability, performance and memory consumption have been improved

Estonian, Frisian, Galician, Hebrew, Indonesian, Punjabi, Sinhala, Tamil, Turkish and Vietnamese were added as new languages. Unfortunately no builds in Traditional Chinese, Slovenian, Swedish or Ukrainian are available for 1.0 beta1

Lightning 1.0 beta1 is available for Windows, Mac OS X (universal builds) and Linux in 37 different languages including English. Please read the release notes for Lightning 1.0 beta1 before downloading.

Thank you again to all our developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters. We would not be able to do this without your assistance!

Finally another status update. We’re down to zero (0) blockers for our upcoming beta release. It’s taken us some time to prepare all the necessary release bits for various reasons:

We’ve decided to pull bug 529326 into this release, because we hope that it will significantly improve the performance for all our users, that use the local (storage) calendar. That bug was fixed today.

We’ve started our outreach into the localizer community to get everyone onboard

Our lead developer Philipp basically has to learn all the stuff that’s needed for a release from the release engineering side on-the-fly. In the past we always had a dedicated release engineer who did this for us.

So please be patient and bear with us. The release is coming :-)

Since the last status update seven weeks ago, a number of bugs were fixed. Here’s the list of the 35 bugs that were fixed since the last status update: